Assimilation

As I quickly chomped on what was left of my lunch, the question came up, “Sammy, do you eat curry?” The sentence rang through my ears as if a bomb exploded next to me, and I lost my hearing. Suddenly, the dreadful words came out of my lips when I responded saying, “No, I think it’s gross.” A pitiful guilt rushed through my veins like I just committed a heinous crime. Gross. That one word was forever imprinted into my memory. Before I could think, I spoke. It certainly wasn’t true; I loved my grandmother’s curry and the way the orchestra of spices played on my tongue when I took a bite of it. So why did I say that?

Walking through the of halls my middle school, I, a 12-year-old, noticed the many cliques and factions of students conversing by their lockers. I knew that I was tired of being called a “nerd”, and I believed the best way to avoid that name was to steer clear of Asians and Indians. This hasty generalization put me in a position where the majority of students I could befriend were white.

Therefore, I started to assimilate to white culture to be noticed. I began to insult my own ethnicity by using stereotypes and misconceptions, and I refrained from watching Indian movies and listening to Indian songs. By behaving this way, I felt like I was distancing myself from being Indian and conforming to white standards. Of course, I knew that my skin was brown, but I liked to believe that was white on the inside. I thought it was who I was; I believed that I was a white boy trapped in the body of an Indian kid, and my ultimate goal was to break free of the cage that was my skin color. For about a year and a half, I continued this mindset until a sudden family emergency sent me on a 9,000-mile journey to India.

As I stepped out of the Bangalore airport and onto Indian soil, I was bombarded with the shrieks of car horns and an absurdly large number of people for an early morning arrival. After entering the scorching hot driveway, I was greeted by my relatives, some whom I’ve known and others whom I’ve only ever heard stories of. After climbing a few flights of stone stairs, the complementing aromas of cardamom, cumin, and turmeric signaled that lunch was soon to begin; I quickly scooped a few spoons of rice, chicken curry, and curd onto my plate as I was eager to devour the meal. Lunch consisted of laughs, a couple tears, and ample questions of life back home in America. That night, my cousin took my brothers and me to her school’s cultural function which I expected to be an uneventful couple of hours. The program kicked off with an energetic Bollywood dance that forced my feet to dance to the beat; I sat in my chair, suspending myself from joining the dancers on the stage. I missed this. I missed dancing along to Indian songs while alone in my room. I missed singing in the shower to the Telugu songs that I loved immensely. I missed watching Indian movies which are so predictable yet so entertaining.

I realized what I was doing for the past year and a half; I was whitewashing myself. I took my culture, beat it, and left it on the side of the road to wither just for the purpose of fitting in. During the beginning of my 8th-grade year, I stopped bottling up the fascinating culture that resided inside me. When I started to embrace it, I met a couple new friends that I bonded with over the different aspects of the Indian culture. From this experience, I learned that “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”-Marcus Garvey

Share this on

Tell my friends

Choose what to email

Which of your works would you like to tell your friends about? (These links will automatically appear in your email.)

Abstract

Adults

Animals

Anime

Fan art

Kids

Send your email

To

Add a personal note

Delete this

Send Us Site Feedback

If you have a suggestion about this website or are experiencing a problem with it, or if you need to report abuse on the site, please let us know. We try to make TeenInk.com the best site it can be, and we take your feedback very seriously.

Please note that while we value your input, we cannot respond to every message. Also, if you have a comment about a particular piece of work on this website, please go to the page where that work is displayed and post a comment on it. Thank you!